Schools across the world are experimenting with AI tools, usually to the dismay of unsuspecting parents. But one privately-run school is explicitly embracing AI as part of its sales pitch, and the in-class experience sounds more bizarre than anything you’d imagine.
A blistering new article by education policy writer and cognitive scientist Benjamin Riley took a look under the hood of Alpha School, a private K-12 school company in the US which boasts an AI-based teaching model, among other highly dubious features.
To make the grade, high school students are required to pass an eight-week “bootcamp.” After being invited to follow social media accounts of other students at Alpha School, Riley observed a process more akin to hazing than high school orientation, as the private company made its prospective pupils jump through increasingly degrading hoops to secure their spot on the roster.
For example, students in the bootcamp are required to start a brand-new account on X-formerly-Twitter, for which they’re required to get a minimum of 100 organic followers, pay for X Premium, and post an unknown number of replies to “bigger accounts with real substance,” as one student explained.
